I caucused in precinct 420 (hehe) in Aurora, Colorado. 5 county convention delegates were up for grabs. I was too busy participating to record the whole thing or take notes. I am a Bernie supporter, but I shall try my best to give an accurate and (mostly) unbiased account of the proceedings to the best of my recollection. There may be a point or two made by each side that I am forgetting and I may have the order of some of the points mixed up. No omission is intentional.
There were 95 people crammed into one high school classroom. The Bernie and Hillary people were asked to move to opposite sides of the room. I’d say that the average age on the Bernie side was 35 or so and the average on the Hillary side was more like 55. I really can’t recall seeing anyone on the Hillary side who looked under 30. (I’m 42.)
Two people left before the voting started. The initial count was 45 for Bernie and 46 for Hillary with two undecided. I suggested that each side make a brief case for their candidate. I asked undecided #1 what issues were most important to her. She said family and inclusiveness. The Bernie side went first.
For the most part, the Bernie people talked in specifics and kept it positive without bringing up a lot of Hillary’s negatives. We talked about concrete proposals that would help families. Medicare for All, $15 minimum wage and free college for all. We talked about Bernie’s civil rights record going back to 1963. A gay guy spoke up to say that Bernie has been for marriage equality for a very long time and Hillary just flipped her position on that fairly recently. At some point someone said something about Hillary’s super PAC. There was a lot of crosstalk so I didn’t hear exactly what was said by the Bernie supporter. Someone on the Hillary side claimed that Bernie has a super PAC, too. The Bernie side angrily refuted that lie and then another half dozen or so Clinton supporters started yelling that Bernie does too have a super PAC!
The Hillary people got more time. It started off quite civilly. They talked about how she is so experienced and such a great debater who will destroy Trump. They talked about how much the Clintons have always fought for ordinary Americans. Several talked about supporting Hillary because she is a woman. To the best of my recollection, not one Hillary supporter talked about an actual policy proposal of Hillary’s that they support. They just spoke in generalities.
Then things started to get a little ugly.
A number of people said that Bernie’s proposals were pie-in-the-sky dreams with no chance of happening.
One elderly woman talked about how she put her three kids through college herself and she didn’t think that college should be free. Another guy talked about college in Germany not really being free because people have to do two years of government service there. (I have not investigated that to see if there is any truth to it, but it obviously has nothing to do with a Wall Street transaction tax paying for public college in America.) I can’t remember if it was the same guy or another one, but one of them started spouting a bunch of numbers about the cost of tuition to make the case that public funding of college is impossible. Some Bernie people tried to yell that it’s paid for with a Wall Street transaction tax but they were told to be quiet and give the Hillary side their time.
Someone said Bernie is a socialist (with what I perceived to be a lot of venom in his voice) and no socialist could win the general.
Someone said that Bernie’s not even on the ballot in every state. Yep, they really tried to make that demonstrably false argument. Of course, lots of angry yelling ensued from the Bernie side. I heard undecided #2 say something like, “Well why would we vote for Bernie then?” through all the back and forth yelling.
Check-in took forever. It was getting late and at this point people just wanted to vote and get out of there. The person running the precinct was a Hillary supporter. At the behest of the majority she declared that the debate time was over. To the best of my recollection she asked the undecideds to choose at this point. (Undecided #2 never got a chance to say what issues were important to her.) Both went to Hillary. That made the count Hillary 48, Bernie 45 which means Hillary got 3 delegates and Bernie got 2.
Then the person running things said she had one more thing to say before both sides did their final verification counts. She went on an angry, unhinged rant about how Bernie is not even a registered Democrat and she’s thinks it’s just disgusting (not sure if she use that exact word, but words to that effect) that he’s trying to win the Democratic nomination. She whipped out some papers she printed up from senate.gov that have an “I” next to Bernie’s name. Apparently for that woman, a letter next to a name is more important than a decades long record of fighting for progressive causes and caucusing with Democrats.
I’m not a mind reader, but my sense is that the angry reactions of Bernie supporters to the lies from some (note that I said some, not all) of the Hillary people were a turnoff to the undecideds and that pushed them over to the Hillary side more than any pro-Hillary argument. It’s hard to hold your tongue when faced with people who are telling blatant falsehoods. When you have so many people crammed into such a small space any disagreement becomes a shouting match in about 2 seconds flat. If I was a person who doesn’t pay much attention to politics and doesn’t know who is telling the truth I could see being swayed to the side that yelled a little less. Like I said, I’m not a mind reader and my Bernie bias could be clouding my perception on this.
I must say it was a bit disturbing to see so many fellow democrats blatantly lying and pushing the “No We Can’t” mantra.
Once the final tallies were recorded, everyone buried the hatchet. People shook hands and thanked each other for turning out. A few Bernie and Hillary people even hugged each other before leaving.
My Thoughts On The Caucus Process
There are aspects I like and some I dislike.
I love the idea of getting together with your neighborhood and debating. I just wish things were a lot less chaotic. Far too many people were crammed into one place. The high school parking lot was jammed packed with lines of cars down the street. I’m guessing that many people gave up and went home when they saw that. I live just a few blocks from there so I walked over. The party needs to rent more schools in the future. If they used a few middle schools in the area instead of cramming everyone into the high school, parking and check-in would have been much faster and easier which would have increased turnout. Also, more precincts could meet in larger areas in cafeterias and gyms instead of small classrooms.
I don’t like that caucuses make it much harder for many people to vote since you have to be there during a narrow window of time. I really wish that primary/caucus days were state holidays to make it easier for everyone to show up. Election day in November should be a national holiday. They do that in many other countries.
I wish the party laid out some concrete guidelines for debating. Hindsight is 20/20, but I wish I had proposed rules that each side gets equal time, that only one person gets to speak at a time and that each side gets time for rebuttal. That would have prevented the yelling.
When you have only two candidates on the ballot it’s not that hard to have a meaningful debate. I honestly have no idea how it could possibly work in a reasonable amount of time with five or six candidates. It would be madness.